Day 6, Year 4: Almost Heaven
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Weather: Overcast, Hot, but No Rain
Location: One 15 Marina, Sentosa Island, Singapore
Singapore is nice, but my log title is not indicating that we think Singapore is almost heaven. It is referring to John Denver’s song, “Almost Heaven, West Virginia.” I have mentioned before that I am a West Virginia mountain mama and it has amazed me that the one and only song that we have heard in every country we have visited is this John Denver classic. After a heavenly dip in the pool this morning, we headed to the embassies of Thailand and India, and then on to Little India. The hours we had for the Thai Embassy were incorrect, so it was closed for Visa applications by the time we arrived. We hiked to the India Embassy and found it still closed for Deepavali. But there was a sign telling us we could go to Little India to a travel agent and make our Visa application there, so we got back on the MRT and went to little India for the sixth day in a row. The short story is that we have to go back to the Thai and India embassies tomorrow, so we decided to have lunch in Little India before walking across to the Sim Lin Centre. We ducked into a little hole in the wall sort of place without looking at the name of the place, looked at the menu, and decided to stay. As we waited for our food to arrive, we realized we were listening to American country music. And then John Denver started singing . . . Almost Heaven. This was the last place in the world we expected to hear this song. So we started looking around and discovered that we were in The Countryside Cafe. There were posters announcing The Elvis Presley Show starring Elvis himself. So this place has been around for quite a few years and how we stumbled upon it we’ll never know.
From The Countryside Cafe in Little India we hiked over to the SimLin Tower to return the transformer we bought on Saturday. The transformer worked great, but not with our inverter. The whole point here was to find a way to convert Singapore’s 240 volt AC current to our US 110 so we can use the shore power in marinas in this part of the world, in fact in all of the world except the US and Canada. But we will have to try to find something in Langkawi in Malaysia as nothing here seems to do the
job. The shop where we bought the transformer was called Convert-Invert and the young man who sold us the transformer had to make modifications for us when we bought it. But thankfully, even with the modifications, they took it back and gave us 80 per cent of the initial cost. Most people bought a transformer in New Zealand, but we made it through without one until now. We are just going to have to buy one from a marine dealer that can install it and make sure things work. Until then, we just have to run the motor twice a day to keep the batteries charged and our system working.
We actually made it back to One15 before dark and enjoyed a late afternoon dip in the pool. One end of the pool has water jets that massage your aching muscles after walking miles around this town and we sure took advantage of those this evening. It’s a tough life out here, but somebody’s got to do it!
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| 081028 Day 6 Singapore–Countryside Cafe |
